


A Saga of Planets

by slinden



Category: Original Work
Genre: Grief/Mourning, Outer Space, my weird shit don't read
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-09
Updated: 2020-05-09
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:47:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 4,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24097561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slinden/pseuds/slinden
Summary: How do we get back to where we have never been?Original work that I posted online a lifetime ago that I don't want to lose for some reason.
Comments: 15
Kudos: 6





	1. Mars

There’s this little house on Mars that you’ve got to visit. It’s not really a house, more like an odd little shack in the middle of a lake. There’s water on Mars. They’re lying to you about that. The little shack sits on a stone island in the middle of the lake. You have to rent a boat from this toothless guy. There are no paddles. Bring your own. It’s nice to paddle. You should visit.  
  
There’s this girl Kate that lives in the little shack on Mars. She’s a nice girl. She tells stories about herself in the third person. There’s not much to do on Mars since they closed the roller coaster due to lack of gravity. The cars just kept floating into space. Kate hasn’t had much to talk about since the last day the roller coaster was open. She misses the screams from the riders as they floated into orbit.  
  
There’s this stupid beach on Mars. No one goes there anymore. They built a shitty restaurant near the beach. The owner is a talking flamingo named Carl. He keeps shitting on the beach. That’s why no one goes to the beach.  
  
There’s this animal on Mars that doesn’t breathe oxygen. Its got these wings that keep it on the ground. He’s a fuzzy little frog with huge feet. We call the animal Graham. He bites us.  
  
We used to take trips to Mars all the time. Then mom got sick and dad lost his job. My brother went away to college and my sister got married. We all fell apart. Some days I sit on the roof and look up at Mars and think ‘Gee, I wonder how Kate is doing in her shack. I wonder if they’ll open the roller coaster. I wonder if they’ll clean up the beach. I wonder if Graham has died since no one is there to feed him with their flesh.’  
  
I used to fly on Mars. You have to tie a rope to your waist so you don’t float away. I could do the best flips on Mars. Things were always easier with less gravity.  
  
I think I’ll move to Mars if I grow up.  
  
So if you’re ever on Mars, tell Kate I said hi. But don’t go to that beach. It’s shit. And Graham will bite you. Don’t go see him.  
  
Mars isn’t that far away if you drive straight up….


	2. Neptune

It’s been a while since I was out this far. It’s cold. It’s not like winter, though. If you stand in the shade for too long on a sunny day, you forget what the sun feels like. It’s that sort of feeling. You get used to it, but you're still wishing for the sun to warm your shoulders.  
  
I wish I’d brought a thicker coat.  
  
I watched the moons along with the rings as I passed them by. I thought about stopping by the ice cream shop on Triton, but it’s too cold for ice cream. Maybe they should’ve thought about that before they built their shop on a frozen moon. They always do things backwards there, anyhow.  
  
The blue clouds parted and let me in. But the familiarity quickly vanished with the last light of the sun.  
  
Things have changed.  
  
I’ve stayed away too long  
  
What happened to the storm? I left it right there.  
  
Were there so many moons the last time I was here?  
  
The wind whips my face, but the chill that runs down my spine comes from another source. You build a fantasy in your mind about your childhood hide-a-ways. The crawl space under the stairs was never as cavernous as you remember. The space underneath the Christmas tree could fit a million gifts. Now, the branches sag and the ornaments don’t shine as bright. But somehow, you always knew it was that way.  
  
I forget how to get to Pluto from here. Everything is moved around.  
  
It’s like your room when you move away to college.  
  
It’s not your room anymore.  
  
It’s where your mother sticks boxes and the old stationary bike. You sleep there when you visit, sure, but it's not your bed. It's someone else's life in your old house.  
  
I don’t like it here anymore. I’m not saying you shouldn’t go. It’s a nice place to visit if you remember to bring a thick coat.  
  
If you’re ever on Neptune, take a few pictures and buy a couple postcards. Memories distort far too easily.  
  
Their key chains suck, though. Don’t buy those. Pieces of shit fall apart when you’re only halfway past Jupiter on the way home.


	3. Mercury

The people on Mercury don’t like to sleep. They like to keep moving. They have silvery skin and can only go to one bar. It’s open 1,416 hours a day. It’s only popular because there is only one bar due to a loophole in the law.  
  
She walked out on me at this bar. She was a shining star in a sea of identical silver faces. She sparkled and dazzled, like stars tend to do. She looked at me and seemed to pull me under her green-eyed spell. I held her close and tried to will time to stop. Things tend to seem perfect when you don’t know them too well. I was content to stay on the surface in that moment.  
  
Then she just walked out.  
  
She looked down at her wrist and said she had to be going. She wasn’t wearing a watch. I thought it was a joke.  
  
It wasn’t.  
  
I caught up with her down the block. I grabbed her hand and she smiled at me and stopped for a moment.  
  
I fell in love in an instant.  
  
She just kept on walking.  
  
I told her I loved her. She laughed again.  
  
“How can anyone love me when I don’t love myself?”  
  
She caught a cab and was whisked out of my life and into the sunlight.  
  
I walked up and down the street until I couldn’t walk anymore. There’s only one street here. She can’t live far. The world is so small that nothing is lost forever.  
  
Have you ever wanted to find something so bad that it scares you? You don’t want to ruin the illusion of perfection. Everything is so ideal for a moment that you just want to put it under a bubble for safekeeping.  
  
I bought a snow globe that night. I kept it on my desk at work. I could shake up the snow and be in that moment forever. Too bad it doesn’t snow there. Too bad broken snow globes stain the carpet.  
  
Too bad I can never go back.  
  
If you’re ever on Mercury, go to the bar on the street. If there’s a girl there that shines like a star, don’t fall in love with her. She’ll tempt you. She’ll grab a hold of you. You’ll be so blinded by her that you won’t realize where she’s taking your heart.  
  
She’ll pull you into the sun.  
  
But soon you’ll find her memories are like water. There’s nothing there but the taste of something hollow. But you’re so sure that you tasted something that your senses wander. Water just seems to have a taste when you’ve had nothing sweeter.  
  
They sell a lot of snow globes on Mercury.  
  
Sunscreen too.


	4. Pluto

Pluto.  
  
Greek God of wealth.  
  
And the underworld.  
  
I got here on a Monday.  
  
They told me to forget about the sun.  
  
Now, I’ve forgotten everything but.  
  
You’re lighter here, but the air is heavier. Your lungs weigh you down, though. It’s like an uncomfortable anchor. The grime is a second skin to a hollow body; hollow except for the dirt that lines the inside of your body. The dirt is everywhere. It’s locked in every pore. Even the particles are trapped. My own body is a cell. Prisons within prisons; cages within cages.  
  
Your head floats. Your body floats. But your mind is the only thing that can’t let go.  
  
This place is the underworld.  
  
There’s no difference between what’s underground and what’s on the surface. It’s a haunting landscape no matter where they make you go. The mines confine you; the surface tries to freeze your blood. But they won’t let you freeze. They’re too callous for that. Even the tortured surface is kinder than they are.  
  
No warmth. No light. Not a whisper of freedom, only the whispers of the mind that are drowned out by the cries.  
  
You become so accustomed to screaming you forget how to breathe without making your voice hoarse. I forget what my own voice sounds like. My own thoughts are twisting into yells for help and mercy.  
  
Just when the cuts begin to heal and the bones begin to knit is when they haul you back down. Down, down, down. Every time, I forget to count the stairs, forget the stars. They drag a needle underneath your skin. The string is poisoned. It’s laced with some addictive venom that crawls into your head. You start to crave the pain.  
  
The only colours are the golden eyes of the captors and the washed-out white orbs of the others.  
  
You start to resent the others.  
  
When you see them and hear their torture, you’re forced to feel the pain you thought you could forget.  
  
You push the aches down and the bile rises. The grit on your teeth mixes with the acid in your mouth. The water starts to taste like blood and that’s when you remember they’ve cut your gums.  
  
They bring you so close to death that you begin to believe you’re free.  
  
That’s the worst pain of all – not being able to die.  
  
I kept dreaming of the sun. It was my refuge in my dreams. I couldn’t sleep, but I could still find my illusions and hide them deep enough inside what was left of my mind.  
  
Then my golden-eyed captors came there too.  
  
I had nowhere to go but down.  
  
Down, down, down into the underworld.  
  
.  
.  
.  
  
  
They rescued us on a Friday. They told me to go home and heal. Then they’d come with questions.  
  
I made myself a cup of tea. The milk in my fridge was still good. No one could tell me how long I was gone. Milk cartons tend to lie. I’ll never be back. I sat on my comfortable chair and wrapped a down duvet around my shoulders. I put on a record and pretended to listen to the safe echoes of my apartment.  
  
Safe.  
  
Home.  
  
Sunshine.  
  
The grit and the blood overwhelm the flavour of my tea.  
  
I’m clean except for the spirits in my prison.  
  
I don’t recommend going to Pluto.


	5. Saturn

You wake up. I mean, you finally wake up. Days have blown by like the dust off the top of the grimy television. Weeks and months have been swept away by the alien maid with her funny shaped arms that have the texture of peanut shells. You finally wake up and look around and think ‘What the fuck just happened here?’  
  
That tiny motel on Saturn. You came here for a weekend. You never meant to stay just the weekend. The calendar is yellowed against the wall. You don’t know how long you’ve been here and you don’t care. You wanted to lock the rest of the world out and you succeeded.  
  
But instead of locking the world out, you were locking yourself in.  
  
You might have slept. Or you might have stretched out on the hard mattress and watched the ceiling flake. The water spot got bigger. The funny banging noises in the walls got worse, then better and then worse again. The carpet was still rough on your toes and the cheap feathers poking out from the pillow still scratch your head like bony little fingers.  
  
But you’ve finally stirred out from under the covers.  
  
Things aren’t the way I left them. It's the only rationale.   
  
That’s the funny thing about trying to stop the world. You throw down your anchor. You expect you’ll be strong enough to stop it, like you're important or some other delusion they build up in your head in elementary school, hell in high school and college. Just because you yank yourself out of the game doesn’t mean the dealer stops shuffling. Just because you know a metaphor doesn’t necessarily mean it will make sense.  
  
They aren’t safe. They never were.

I'm alone. And so are you.  
  
That bubble you built up around them in your head was never there.  
  
You’ve lost it all now, whatever it was. The family you always kept in the back of your mind have all fallen away, drifting off while you were waiting for the bus or out buying milk. While you were waiting for something more, they slipped away.  
  
You came to Saturn to rest, like I did, with visions of returning home.  
  
But instead you just keep running. Just a few more planets left, and then maybe you’ll go home to pick up the pieces. That's what I'm thinking, like you. Make some changes. Paint a picture or something. Put their stuff in the attic and then burn the house down. They can't be gone if you don't believe it.  
  
The maid comes through and throws the soda cans into the trash with the rest of the garbage. You'd had them lined up on the top of the counter and she just shoves them into her scummy cart with her peanut arms. She nods her alien head and grunts like a hungry hippopotamus, even though you’re pretty sure you don’t know what hippopotami sound like. No one cares here. The rings on Saturn are made out of empty milk cartons and beer cans.  
  
If you’re ever on Saturn, remember to recycle. No one else bothers to.


	6. Venus

"Save the marshmallow tree! Save the marshmallow tree beetle!"  
  
She grabs my coat. "Don’t go in there. They sell marshmallow trees."  
  
I brush her off. I have to go inside. I’m an arborist. I took night classes at the Venus Community College.  
  
If you’re ever on Venus, watch out for the protestors. They sit outside the Universal Museum of the Universe in their little protestor shantytown made out of umbrellas, parachutes, and credit card applications. They wait until people near the door and then scream and brandish their signs of discontent. Many of them took the same hyperbole night class as I did at the community college. They know how to scare your socks off with their hyperbolizations of horror.  
  
The Universal Museum of the Universe was founded on Venus after they discovered that marshmallow trees grow in the fertile soil of the caves underneath the land that the museum owner inherited from his Uncle Kripilltontogo. The guy who founded the museum uses it as a proxy to fund his underground marshmallow tree trafficking.  
  
He sells some of the trees legally in the museum’s gift shop. The rest are sold to the eccentric Venus crime families. They run the Venus Community College. They have their dirty hands in everything on Venus.  
  
The marshmallow tree isn’t made of marshmallows. It doesn’t produce marshmallows. It doesn’t smell like marshmallows. It’s an ugly little bush that lives underground and is covered in brown slime. It’s the color of rotting eggplant mixed with burnt popcorn. It smells like a broken light bulb if the light bulb had once contained rotten hamburger. The marshmallow tree isn’t pleasant at all, but throw the word ‘marshmallow’ in front of something and the people will buy it.  
  
But now the trees are dying. And since I was the only one that took the arborist night classes from the Venus Community College, I must save them. Other people signed up for the class, but no one else ever showed up. I think it was because the teacher is an oak tree, but that’s not the point.  
  
The beetles are killing the trees. I have to kill the beetles with all the skills I learnt from my oak tree professor.  
  
The protestor follows me inside.  
  
"Don’t kill the beetles!"  
  
"But I must. They are killing the trees. We must break the cycle of pain. Without the trees, the ground will collapse and we’ll no longer have the beautiful museum and your shantytown will wither in the heat."  
  
She doesn’t buy my lie.  
  
"I took that hyperbole class too, stink-face."  
  
She kicks me in the leg. She’s wearing concrete sandals. It hurts, just like falling off the world’s largest pumpkin, after snapping its stem, thus disqualifying it from being named the world’s largest pumpkin just hours before the competition.  
  
As I’m lying there, in pain on the steps of the Universal Museum of the Universe, I see the way the sun catches her raspberry-tinted hair. She’s got eyes the color of goldfish scales. The coat she’s wearing is the one I tossed out last winter because of the holes in the elbows. She patched them with recycled newspaper editorial pages. I know it’s against the aborist’s code, but I’ve fallen in love.  
  
That night we burnt down the museum and we were married. She fell for my smooth talking arborisms and eventually apologized for breaking my shin with her concrete sandals.  
  
The trees survived underneath the ashes of the museum. I know it. I could hear them singing their funny little song deep into the night. They sing, you know. I forgot to mention that to you.  
  
If you’re ever on Venus, take the arborist classes at the night school. There are still pockets of marshmallow trees to save. They trust you if you have your arborists' license. Don’t be mistaken and take the arsonists class instead.  
  
Unless you hate the smell of rotten hamburger and trees that sing.  
  
The beetles are ugly too. I heard they cause global warming and will one day cause Venus to spin into the sun.  
  
Don’t tell my wife I said that. She’ll put them in my bed.


	7. Jupiter

They sell dreams on Jupiter. They wrap them up in purple paper and hand them to you from across a big marble counter. Some people walk out with piles of packages. Little red wagons filled with all the little hopes that you hide away in those far corners of your mind.  
  
We went to Jupiter to find our dreams. Well, I went for the dreams. She went for the sailing. Sailing on Jupiter is quite lovely, we had read. Of course, we read that in the Jupiter Tourism Board's Annual List of Things to do on Jupiter. It's not that long and most of the items have to do with sailing. I hate sailing. It reminds me of death.  
  
I walked up to the counter and asked for the package with my name on it. The dream makers like to be thorough. Don’t want someone else getting their mitts of mischief on your dreams. She handed me a tiny box. It was like the box the dentist would give you when you had a tooth pulled. Except this one didn't have a tooth in it.  
  
She told me it was free.  
  
Then we went sailing. We rented a boat with a bright blue sail and pushed it out into the wind. The crimson tinted waves lapped at the side of the boat as we drifted out. The entire trip, out onto the sea of the Great Red Spot, I stared at the box. All my dreams were in this tiny box.  
  
When I shook it, it sounded empty.  
  
From across the deck, I saw the wind catch her hair. She wasn’t interested in her dreams on this trip. She told me we’d come back. I bet her dreams could fill the sea. The pile would explode in a wave of purple regency. I’m just a drop in her sea. I’m an empty Christmas morning. Nothing but winter and cold and the promise of more winter and cold. And dirty Christmas dishes.  
  
Her eyes were looking out onto the horizon. Always looking forward. I’m always looking backward, waiting for whatever is chasing me to catch up.  
  
I stand. I put the box on the deck.  
  
And then I dive over the edge of our little sailboat.  
  
Down, down, down. Down to where overly vague metaphors make sense and all the Legos that the vacuum cleaner ate are stored. Those are on Jupiter too. I wonder why they don’t sell those with the dreams. But that would make too much sense.  
  
Things don’t have to make sense in the sea of the Great Red Spot. You don’t drown in wind. You float and you glide. You drift. You drift until a grizzly old man fishes you out. He’s fishing for tomatoes in a sea of wind, on a giant planet filled with people holding little purple packages of their dreams. The oddest thing that comes to mind from that statement is that all the tomatoes on Jupiter are blue and sell real estate. But they live in a sea of wind, so the real estate can’t be all that good.  
  
Don’t go looking for your dreams on Jupiter. Go for the sailing.  
  
Unless you equate sailing with death, that is. Some people just hate boats.  
  
And tomatoes.


	8. Uranus

There once was a man from Uranus.  
  
He made fun of the name and got punished.  
  
They made him sell comical hats at the bus station. And by comical I mean sad. Sad things always make me laugh, so in a way the hats were comical. If you like laughing at crappy hats, that is.  
  
This isn’t the start of a very bad limerick. He really did sell hats at bus stations. He’s been at it for 84.01 years. He makes his own hats and sells them from his little stand next to the main bus station. It’s not a very lucrative business.  
  
I was his first customer in those 84.01 years.  
  
The hats really sucked.  
  
"The hats are metaphors, sonny," he said, leaning against his crooked cane, next to his sideways stand. "Metaphors for our worries in this world."  
  
My hat was a crown made out of a pink napkin. I guess all my worries are tinted pink.  
  
"Uh huh." I looked up at the sky, eyeing the rings above my head. "What are the rings made of?"  
  
He shrugged. "Lost Frisbees. The ones your dad promised to get off the roof, but he never got around to it."  
  
I eyed the old man. "Those don’t look like Frisbees to me. Looks more like ice. Big chunks of ice."  
  
"You live in your world, I’ll live in mine."  
  
So I sat on the curb, next to his crummy sideways hat stand. When they said Uranus is sideways, I think the people took it a little too literally. The bus station was on its side too. Oddly enough, that’s not the strangest thing I’ve seen all day.  
  
"Maybe no one buys your hats because they can’t read the sign because, you know, it's sideways."  
  
He glared. "They can read just fine. They just don’t like the truth. The truth about the hats."  
  
The phone booth on the sideways bus station began to ring. The old man grumbled as he limped over to the phone. I was staring as he went. No use in getting up.  
  
"It’s for you," he said, holding out the receiver.  
  
Fine. I’ll get up.  
  
"When you coming home, stargazer?" The silky voice asked me.  
  
I shrugged. "When I find my home, I’ll tell you."  
  
"You’re running out of room to run."  
  
I looked around the bus stop. The soil wasn’t quite blue, but it wasn’t quite any other color I’ve ever seen. Unblue soil on a blue planet. Come home? Come home to what? Pockets of memories and hollow souvenirs? I took the pink hat off my head and crumpled it in my hands.  
  
"See you on the moon, sweetheart."  
  
I hung up. I walked back to the old man and handed him the crumpled paper ball. He looked at the ball, then at me, then at the approaching bus. It screeched to a stop and a few more lonely souls walked out to stare at the oddly sideways bus station.  
  
"Try to sell them your metaphorical truth-hats," I said to the old man. "They look interested in buying."  
  
Back on the bus I went.  
  
If you’re ever on Uranus, don’t make any jokes about the name or they’ll make you sell hats outside of the bus station. Nobody likes the bus station. Even the bus station hates the bus station. If I were a bus station, I’d hate myself too.


	9. Moon

The fog rolls in when we put her out to sea. She loved sailing. She loved flowers, sailing, and hated socks. That’s why we left her barefoot in the boat and put her out to sea.  
  
‘We’ are my son and I. Her son: a part of her that won’t be snuffed out by the fog coming in from the Sea of Tranquility. No diving. No swimming. Small craft only.  
  
I light a candle. I like how it feels and light another one.  
  
The cratered surface with its mini-malls and Ford dealerships start to light up. Every candle is a word I didn’t say to her. Every flame is a moment we’ll never have. Every spot of light is another breath she’ll never take.  
  
The moon shines with its own light. It’s no longer a useless mirror to a distant, hurtful sun. A million candles won’t be enough. Never enough.  
  
It’s time to go home. Time to go back to the home that never wanted me.  
  
They might want to see their grandson.  
  
They might want to see what I’ve become.  
  
If you’re ever on the moon, watch out for the wax. Millions of candles usually result in millions of small puddles of wax.


End file.
